Can't Find Myself Tonight
by JannP
Summary: What was Finn thinking after he found out Beth wasn't his?  One-parter and missing scene from 1X13 "Sectionals".  Rated T because Finn isn't the only four-lettered f-word I like.


Finn walked into his room, swinging his arm and hooking his backpack over the edge of the door to pull it closed before he tossed the Jansport against the wall with a loud thump.

He blew out a breath and sagged down onto the bed, his eyes still unseeing. It was a little scary to think he had driven home from school and hadn't seen a damn thing. He hoped he hadn't done any damage to anything. Then again, he hoped he had. He didn't care.

His heart was pounding against his chest. He could feel the blood throbbing through his veins, could hear the rush of it in his ears, but he couldn't hear anything else. Unless, of course, it was the voices that cut right through him, replaying on an endless loop in his head.

_It was his first real relationship. They had been together eight months and in that time they had been through a lot. They had survived. It had all been a lie._

He had tried his hardest to take care of her. He had tried his hardest, done everything he could, and in the end he fell short just because none of it was ever his to begin with. The girl who had no trouble moving his hands or telling him no had actually had sex with someone else. She wanted someone else, needed something else, took something else and never said a word about it.

She took something else from him. What was it? Did it even matter? It was gone now, whatever it was. Who gave a shit about even trying to figure it out?

He tipped over so he was laying on his bed. It was awkward and he had actually outgrown the bed, but right now he didn't care. He could've been laying in the middle of the street and he would've felt exactly the same. Maybe he should go lay in the middle of street. It was hard to have girl problems when you were a Buick pancake.

He looked over at the Xbox console that he'd forgotten to turn off the last time he played. Things were seriously fucked up when he not only didn't care if he was vaporized on level two, but he didn't even care enough to turn the thing off. What was the next level of life beyond 'seriously fucked up'?

Buick pancake. He didn't think there was anything between the two.

He laid there, still in his school clothes, until all the light coming from the window was gone. There was a soft knock on his door. It wasn't his Mom's knock. Besides, she hadn't started her shift until three o'clock today so she would be gone late. He'd seen the note that probably indicated dinner and second dinner were in the fridge. His mom worked so hard. This would crush her, too.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. "Who is it?" He asked the door knocker as he pulled the phone out of his pants. He flipped it open; new text message. He really wasn't in the mood to hit okay and see the stick figures banging each other that Puck thought he'd think was entertaining.

Puck. Hell.

There was no actual answer to his question but the door opened softly. The top of her blonde head came in before anything else. It was followed closely by her pregnant belly.

He diverted his glance to the screen on his phone. It was not a joke from Puck as he had expected, but was instead a message from Rachel. _I'm here if you need me. I'm so sorry._ _RB*_

A brief smile flickered on his face. It was unbearably cute how she insisted on using full, proper words in her text messages. He knew she was in his corner. She was the only person in his life who spoke the truth. She was the only one he could really count on. But at least he had that one person still. When he'd said he was done with all of them, he didn't mean her. He just couldn't face her right now, though. It might kill him. Or take something else without him knowing. Could you be castrated and not know it?

"A smile?" Quinn said. She had brought her hands together in front of her and she was studying them. "I didn't expect that."

His face fell as he snapped his phone closed and he sat up. "Yeah, well. It wasn't for you."

She nodded. "I don't suppose telling you I'm sorry again would do any good."

"No," he admitted. He gripped the edge of the mattress, feeling the piping on it when his fingers gripped tightly. "Because I don't think you are."

"I would rather be with you," she admitted, inhaling a raspy breath. "I wish she was yours."

He studied the wall across the room from where he sat. If he'd been completely humiliated to learn everything in the last few hours, it was nothing compared to realizing the baby he had actually started to love wasn't his to love. That was the first thing he couldn't stop thinking about.

He would have to get to the rest of it later because it was just too much.

It was too much for him to even say anything else out loud. "You should go," he said simply, still staring at the wall without seeing. He blinked once and the tears were there. He wanted them to go away. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fucking fair that she should be able to just take everything and still be here watching him cry… _making _him cry. She had turned him into a girl. No, you couldn't be castrated without feeling it. He had kind of answered his own question.

"We should talk," she stated simply, her voice faltering as she smoothed her hands over her dress to sit down beside him on the bed. He sprung up almost immediately.

"I can't," he choked out. "I can't talk about this."

"I don't have anywhere else to go," she admitted, her voice desperate. "You've been everything to me for—"

He lifted his hands up to pull at his hair and block his ears and his face closed off as he slammed his eyes shut. "Stop! Just stop it!"

"No, Finn, _you_ stop. You stop and listen," she ordered.

He dropped his hands as his voice rose. "No! I'm so goddamn sick of you telling me what to do!" He pushed his hands out like he could maybe push away the feeling of suffocation that was threatening to choke him entirely. "You need to leave. I don't even care where you go. Just get your stuff and get out."

He looked down and saw the book she'd been reading sitting on his nightstand. Although she was staying in the small room down the hall, her stuff was all mixed in with his in his room. Since she'd moved in they had spent a lot of time in his room so it made sense that her things were there. He picked up the book, strode to the door, and tossed it down the hall.

"Let me help you," he said simply. He heard the paperback slump against the baseboards at the end of the hall after the loud thump where it first made contact.

Quinn's eyes were wide as she started at him blankly.

His hands were shaking as he set them on his hips. He took in a dry breath, followed by the wet sounds of sniffling when he finally reached up to wipe the tears away from his cheeks with his fingers.

"What about us?" She finally asked in her brittle voice. She was watching him slowly, taking it all in, but choosing her words very carefully.

"I already told you I'm done," he said. He dropped his head. "I'm done. Go have your baby with Puck and leave me out of it."

"I never wanted to have a baby with him," she said. She had lowered her eyes, her wet eyelashes clumped together and brushing against her cheeks as she blinked. "I never wanted to be with him."

"They why were you?" He asked forcefully, the words ripping out from somewhere inside him that he couldn't have controlled if he tried. "Just…no. Never mind. I don't want an answer."

"You deserve answers. I just don't have any."

"I don't care what they are anyway. I don't want to know." He brought his head up, feeling the headache starting to creep up between his tense shoulder blades. He had blown off practice today, obviously, and not working out his tension on the field was already starting to pile up a little, especially with all the additional stress. He was starting have an actual physical reaction. He looked out the window, unwilling to look at her one more time. "I know everything I already need to know," he said quietly, the words painful in his scratchy throat. "Sometimes the things you do say more than the words you speak. That's definitely the case here. So I'm done and I want you to go. _Now_."

He still wasn't looking so he didn't see her sad, timid little nod. "Okay. I'll come back and pack when you're somewhere else," she promised. And then she was gone and he was alone.

He felt so alone. There was no understanding this. Shit, he was going through it and he didn't understand it. He had no hope of explaining it anyway. All he knew was that he was very, very tired and he didn't even want to try.

He pulled the phone back out of his pocket long enough to clear all the text messages out of it and then turn it off. Clearing the messages deleted everything Quinn had sent him, her sharp reminders about things like doctor's appointments and asking when he would be back from work. He deleted everything Rachel had sent him, even though most of it was about glee. He deleted the dirty jokes and foul-mouthed observations from Puck. All of it was gone. If only it were that easy.

Finn laid back down on his bed. They all expected so much out of him. Sometimes he thought their expectations were way too high. There was no way he could do all that, no way he would ever live up to all of it. It was easier to just lay here alone and hope his mind would go blank soon.

Football was just about over; they had one more game on Friday and he knew by forfeiting today's practice that he wasn't going to be playing in it. He couldn't even bring himself to care, which was pretty sad. Sectionals for glee club were on Saturday, and he knew he wasn't going to that already. There were no words for that kind of overload, and mixed in with all the stuff about Quinn and Puck and the baby was another, heavier feeling of betrayal. All of them had known Quinn's secret. They'd known he was working his guts out, killing himself for something that wasn't his. They seemed content to just let it go on. Had they laughed when they found out? Did they think it was entertaining? Well, fuck 'em all.

From what he gathered, Rachel had told him as soon as she knew. There were ten other people in the group. Ten people he had thought were his friends. How could they just not tell him? And then they kept it from Rachel because she would tell him. Somehow that was the difference. The difference between just not telling him and deliberately keeping it from him was the difference between being a crappy friend and total betrayal.

Maybe he was an idiot like they all said. Maybe that's why it had been so easy. Poor, dumb Finn will work himself into an early grave for you if you just whisper the right poison into his ear. Tell him it's the cool thing to do to—tell him, even though he knows it means a life of disappointment—that supporting his family is cool.

And here came the anger again. He was just all over the place. He wondered if this is what people felt like before they laid down in the middle of the road into oncoming traffic. Since he had been contemplating that an hour ago, he was pretty sure he was a new authority on it.

What he did with all of this, how he acted now, it had the potential to kill his mom. His mom made a point of telling him that he was all she had. She loved him. She was always honest with him. But would she even know what to do? There was no way she could understand this. How could she understand that he'd bought the lies for so long, that he had reshaped his future so completely based on something so unlikely?

It hadn't really seemed fair that he would have to turn his whole life upside down without even getting to have the sex that would cause it in the first place.

He shook his head. How was he supposed to know? Seriously, he knew that actually doing it without a condom or other birth control was stupid and could get someone pregnant. He knew which part of it actually got someone pregnant. How in the hell was he supposed to know that not having sex could end in the same result? Could it really? Now he wasn't so sure. It sounded stupid.

There was no way he was the first guy to blow in a hot tub unintentionally. No way in hell was he the first person in history to do that. And somehow, arriving early didn't seem to be the listed cause for a lot of pregnancies. Of course, a lot of people's girlfriends hadn't lied and needed some sort of cover for their boyfriend's virginity still resulting in a baby.

Driven by curiosity and largely wondering just how dumb he was to believe the whole thing, he sauntered out into the darkening house to their computer and flipped it on. He could see his mom's note still sitting on the kitchen counter, the acid green paper lit by the soft light from the stove on the clock drawing his fractured attention.

It was truly the first time in a long time, since that bout with the flu a year and a half ago, that the thought of dinner made him nauseous. But his mom would be suspicious if he didn't eat something. How was he going to tell her about this? How would he find words to explain any of it? It was so embarrassing. Just so _wrong_.

Windows chimed, and he entered his password then grimaced, staring blankly at the screen as it loaded. He would have to change his passwords, too. But why the hell not? Everything else had already changed.

He pulled up the internet browser; he didn't know where to look up crap like this. So he made what he would later know was the mistake of googling "hot tub sex".

The parent filter popped up, denying him access to the results with a waving bear on the screen. He groaned. _Seriously, Mom_?

He closed the webpage and sighed. It didn't really matter how likely it was that Quinn's story was true; he now knew it wasn't true. Regardless of percentages, he was still the idiot who had believed her and then tried to make the situation right. No wonder it had been such a struggle—nothing about it was right and it wasn't his responsibility.

How could she do this to him? How could she lie about something like that and then come to him and ask about their relationship? Maybe she was the stupid one. It wasn't like she had told him the whole time they were together. She wasn't as smart as she liked to think. She was just heartless and nasty and a liar.

For a brief second, he felt sorry for the child she was having. He felt sorry that this poor, innocent baby was being born to a mother who was so deceitful she would've lied about who the baby's father was. He wondered, if not for Rachel, if he would've ever found out. The whole thing was such a mess. It was a mess that _she_ had made.

She was the one to blame. She was the liar. She was the fraud. She was the idiot.

Rage washed through him, unchecked and magnified by everything that was already floating around in his mind and threatening to crush him. He wasn't exactly sure what force guided him, but he marched straight back to the room she'd been staying in, the white-walled room that was even a little smaller than his bedroom with the cowboy wallpaper. It was getting cold outside, but was still a pretty day out. He wished there were snow on the ground or something, just to increase the 'fuck you' in what he was about to do. He pushed the window up to open it and pushed out the loose screen. Puck had broken it on purpose, leaving Finn's mom none-the-wiser, so they could sneak out and spy on a girls' slumber party two summers ago.

He rested his hands on the windowsill and let his head hang, dangling off his tense shoulders and pulling the frustration out just a little bit as he took two deep breaths. He really had no idea how she'd organized everything in the room, but her dad had only given her a half hour to pack and he knew there was no way she'd brought all her clothes and all her other stuff with her. She had been muttering about what items were the most necessary the entire time she was shoving different items in the bag. The bag…the bag…. he looked around and didn't see the black bag, marked with red and white letters displaying the Cheerios logo.

So he started grabbing what he _did_ see—mostly clothes—in his bare hands and tossing it out the window. Books, compact discs, makeup, more clothes… he chucked all of it out into the yard. Maybe if she was entirely out of the house and out his life he would be able to get some peace or at the very least, get some sleep.

He finished by stripping the blankets off the bed and tossing them out to coat the messy pile before he slammed the window shut and twisted the lock on the bottom.

Finn went back into his room and lay down on the bed, twisted on his side like he had been when he first dropped there this afternoon. It _was_ oddly comforting, having her stuff out of the house. He wanted to feel bad for leaving it out in the cold, for leaving her out in the cold, but he couldn't manage it. If he tried to muster up even a little bit of sympathy, the hurt and frustration and anger welled up instead. And it made him start crying all over again.

He wasn't a bad person, right? He had thought about taking the garden hose to the entire pile, thinking if she stayed away long enough it would freeze all together. He hadn't done it, so that meant he wasn't a bad guy, didn't it? He hadn't done the worst thing he could think of.

He still wanted to. He was afraid that he might kill Puck the next time he saw him. He sighed. Yeah, going to prison probably wouldn't be the best way to handle this without killing his mom. He tried to close his eyes and remember what he felt like this morning before all of this.

This morning, just twelve hours ago, he'd been arriving at school. Quinn had been right beside him, talking about how great sectionals were going to be and about her doctor's appointment next week and about something she and his mom were making for dinner on Sunday. He hadn't really been paying attention to the constant stream of words coming out of her mouth, but all of it was happy chatting. No indication that anything was going to happen.

He'd had the feeling the worst was maybe finally behind them. It had crossed his mind that winning sectionals might give glee club some credibility and would get those who thought they were better to leave them alone for a while. That's all he needed; to be left alone for a while. They still had a little while until the baby was born and with the possibility that things would actually be okay, he finally had enough energy to plan ahead. As long as things didn't get worse, he would be fine. He could save money and keep working and he would figure something out. He'd received a couple of invitations for summer football camps after recruiters watched him play, and even though his team hadn't won the games they had attended, they were all promising him rewards for doing well at the camps.

In short, this morning he had felt like he was on his way. Not that he had arrived somewhere better, somewhere less stressful, than he already lived. But that someday those doors would open for him. He could leave Lima. He could go to college. He could provide for his accidental family and keep them with him as he struggled to be a success. He was toying with the idea of taking singing lessons so he could maybe try for additional scholarships in music or maybe drama. Rachel liked to think she had him talked into trying out for the spring musical. This morning, there were possibilities.

This afternoon and tonight, there was only wreckage. He was a total wreck and he knew it. This morning, he contemplated being on stage. This afternoon, he contemplated being under a car. _On purpose_. That was messed up. He was totally messed up. He was messed up because they had messed him up. Even if he didn't know much, he knew it wasn't all his fault. Still, he wished maybe he hadn't been so quick to believe or excuse.

His mom always told him that one of the things she loved the most about him was that he trusted people. After that Darren guy had left her, she had carefully explained to Finn that you couldn't always trust people because people would hurt you. He had to admit the lesson had a whole different meaning to him now than it probably had even this morning. How would he ever trust anyone again? Who could he trust? How should he decide who, when, and how to trust? What did it even mean to trust someone?

A few hours later, his mom's hand on his shoulder woke him up.

"Finn?" She said softly. "Honey?"

He dragged his eyes open, even the small nightlight slamming into his head and earning a throb from the painful headache. "Hey, mom."

"What's going on?" She asked softly. "Why are you asleep with your school clothes on?" Her voice was lower on the second question. "And why does it look like we're hosting a really disorganized yard sale in the middle of the night?"

His eyes fell closed and he groaned. "I don't wanna talk about it."

She persisted, her voice still soft. "Where is Quinn? Did you guys get any dinner?"

"I don't know if she did. I'm not hungry."

"Okay," she said, her hand still rubbing his back. It felt nice. Like he was a little boy again and he was mad because the stitching on his baseball glove had come apart. He liked that feeling. He liked it a lot better than feeling like a wannabe man who's entire life had come apart. "You've gotta give me something here because I don't get it."

He sighed and sat up, feeling the throb of blood rushing through the arm and leg he'd been sleeping on awkwardly as they came back to life. He leaned forward and dropped his head in his hands, resting his elbows on his knees, and squeezed his eyes closed. Anything to make the pounding in his head go away so he could get the words out.

"I found out Quinn cheated on me. The baby isn't mine. Neither is she."

His mom retracted the hand she had rested on his arm to cover her open mouth. "What?"

"We never even had sex," Finn admitted. "No one thinks that's true because she's pregnant, so that's the proof I'm lying, right?" He groaned. "Only I'm not. She's the one who lied. She lied about all of it."

"You never….?" His mom demanded. He realized he had actually said that out loud and he kind of wanted to die on the spot. He freely expressed his gratitude toward his mom, called her his favorite person on Mother's Day at school, and he actually meant it. But being close to his mom didn't mean he wanted to talk about sex with her. It was awkward and embarrassing and she would spout off hundreds of things parents said because they had read it somewhere and they didn't know what else to say anyway.

He shook his head violently and tugged at his hair. "I don't wanna talk about this."

He could hear the strain in her voice, how much it hurt her to watch him falling apart. He didn't want to fall apart. He didn't want her to see him that way. But he couldn't be strong in front of his mom. He wanted her to rub his back and tell him everything would be okay, the way she had when he admitted Quinn was pregnant.

"Okay," she said. "Do you want me to call Noah? Maybe it would be easier to talk to him about it."

It pushed him over the ledge, peeled his fingers away from the last stronghold he had, and he dove into her lap again, just like he had when he told her about Quinn the first time. "It was him. He was the other guy."

He cried there for a long time, comforted but not comfortable and still not exactly sorting things out. But telling his mom and hearing her reassure him as she mumbled it into his hair, words mixed with teardrops and the kind of soothing only his mom could give him made him feel like maybe he could eventually sort it out. Like maybe he wouldn't always be so screwed up and sad and confused.

Finally, she kissed the top of his head and sniffled and he realized that he wasn't crying anymore. He gave one last squeeze with the arm he'd wrapped around her waist, and sat up to rub at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"I guess it really is just me and you," he said, the following sniffle not doing anything to actually help him breathe. "I'm so sorry, mom."

She shook her head as she finished wiping her own tears out of the corners of her eyes. She reached up and tripped her thumbs over his cheeks. "It isn't your fault they lied, sweetheart. The only thing in your control is what you do with it."

He took two or three more breaths, each one more steady than the last. "So what do I do?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I'm sorry." She put her hands in her lap. "But I have been so proud of you, Finn. None of this has been easy for you. I know how hard you've been working. And I know football is ending so you won't have any distractions. Maybe you should just concentrate on your schoolwork, get your grades back up, and just hang on until the break. Don't you have something coming up for glee club, too?"

He shook his head. "I quit," he admitted. "They all knew. Every single one of them knew except Rachel. When she found out, she told me."

She looked even more concerned. "That's how you found out? Quinn and Puck weren't saying anything?"

He just shook his head in response. "No, and I thought all those people were my friends. I mean, we didn't hang out all the time or anything ,but they were all so nice and they all offered to help out with the baby and kept checking up on us and… I guess no one meant it."

His mom shook his head. "Oh, Finn."

"I only have one friend left." He sniffled again and this time it eased his breathing a little bit. "I can't talk to her, though."

"To Rachel?" She clarified and he nodded without meeting her eyes. "Why not? " His mom had only met any of the other glee kids a handful of times total, and only met Rachel one additional time because she'd come over with the proofs from the yearbook photo shoot for him, as co-captain, to approve.

He was afraid he was going to cry again. "She's smart. She's, like, really smart and she's pretty and she's an awesome person… and I'm an idiot."

"You're not an idiot."

"No, I'm stupid and I believed them. And I don't want her to look at me and see me and realize how dumb I am."

"If she's an awesome person, though, maybe she could help you."

"How?" He gasped out. "I don't even know how to help me. She always has something to say, but I don't know if it would be helpful."

Carole laughed in spite of herself. "Well, that's one step better than me."

He smiled, too. It felt foreign and almost fake. "I don't know what I need or what to do anyway."

She nodded. "Well, I'll write a note and excuse you from school tomorrow. Get some sleep and we'll take it from there, okay?"

Suddenly, he felt like maybe he could sleep for a hundred years. He nodded his agreement and she pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Okay. Good night."

He moved over to the set of drawers where his pajamas were and took out sweatpants and a clean t-shirt to change into. He knew it had to be close to midnight. Her nursing shift hadn't ended until at least eleven, and they had been in his room for a long time. If he fell asleep now, maybe he could wake up and it would be a whole new year. Maybe he would be a whole new person. He looked down at himself while he changed out of his school clothes.

He looked the same. He was still all in one piece. Physically, he looked like the same old him. He didn't feel the same, though. He felt like his insides had been put through a meat grinder and spit back out into a lump. He didn't know how to put them all back together. He didn't know how to feel better.

Maybe he would just wake up and have an idea where to go from here. That was really the best he could hope for. And at least tomorrow wasn't today; today was going down as the worse day of his life. The only good thing to be said about it, about _any_ of it, was at least it was over.


End file.
